LAKE ELSINORE: City clerk looking into recall campaign documentation

Letters allege possible violations for lack of disclosures

Campaign documents filed by a group trying to recall Lake
Elsinore City Councilman Thomas Buckley appear incomplete and
conflicting, the city clerk has determined, prompting her to put
the organization's leader on notice that amendments are needed.

Also, City Clerk Debora Thomsen has sent letters to the state
Fair Political Practices Commission and the secretary of state's
office notifying them of potential violations by the recall
proponents.

Thomsen said Thursday she has not received responses yet from
the state agencies or leaders of the recall campaign to the letters
sent out at the end of August. She said she will wait until she
receives advice from state officials before she decides what action
to take.

Part of the problem with the paperwork, Thomsen said, is that
the organization, Elsinore Voters Against Corruption, initially
registered itself as a political campaign committee under that
name. Thomsen, however, ruled the name was inadequate because it
wasn't specific about its purpose, so the leaders changed the name
to the Committee to Recall Thomas Buckley.

Yet, Elsinore Voters Against Corruption has continued to conduct
campaign activities under that name, including maintaining a Web
site that solicits donations, Thomsen noted in her letter to
campaign leader Enelida Caron.

Also, Thomsen noted in the letter that costs to set up and
maintain the Web site and other expenses, such as telephones and
utilities, office supplies and furniture, and personnel such as
consultants, office staff and petition circulators were not listed
on Form 460, a financial disclosure statement required of campaign
committees and candidates.

Thomsen's letter to Caron calls into question the absence of
reported expenditures on a consultant and paid signature gatherers,
despite the fact that a known professional petition consultant,
John Burkett, accompanied her to City Hall on Aug. 24 when she
delivered the petition accompanied by 3,575 signatures.

Also, only one person's name was found on the line requiring the
signature of the "Person Circulating the Recall Petition" on more
than 700 pages of signatures, Thomsen states in her letter to the
secretary of state's office.

"I believe these petitions were actually circulated by paid
signature gatherers who employed this methodology because they did
not meet the resident registered voter qualifications to circulate
the Recall Petition," Thomsen wrote.

The campaign needs 3,197 signatures of registered Lake Elsinore
voters to qualify and require the city to hold a recall election.
The county registrar of voters office is in the process of
verifying whether enough of the signatures are valid. Earlier this
week, Thomsen said the registrar's office had verified 1,156 of the
signatures so far.

The campaign disclosure form filed by the committee to meet a
July 30 deadline for the January through June reporting period
lists just one contribution, a nonmonetary donation of $1,500 from
a man identified as Henry Cook for providing an office to the
campaign on Main Street in downtown Lake Elsinore. The owner of the
building, who is not Henry Cook, said recently that he had received
monetary payment for the campaign's use of the office.

That contribution, dated on the form as March 1, was more than
$1,000, the threshold that qualifies a committee as an official
entity and requires it to report any further contributions and
expenditures.

However, Thomsen notes in her communications, no other
contributions or expenditures were reported and the Form 410 filed
with the secretary of state to establish the committee states that
it qualified on June 17, three months after the Cook
contribution.

As has been the campaign's practice recently, calls and an
e-mail from The Californian seeking a comment from Caron were not
returned Thursday.

Buckley said the problems with the forms support his view that
the campaign is motivated by a vendetta against him by the owner of
Trevi Entertainment Center, where Caron works, and has nothing to
do with the petition's allegations that he has personally
benefitted from his office, allegations that Buckley calls
"bogus."

He said he believes the multiple problems with the forms are
enough to get the recall effort disqualified even if enough
signatures are validated.

"It's corruption, collusion and deception as an overall modus
operandi," Buckley said of the campaign's methods. "Each of these
issues (identified by the clerk) are important when taken alone,
but when you put them together, it's astonishing how blatant
they've been."

Buckley voted twice against allowing the entertainment center's
nightclub to have live entertainment because of safety issues. He
and three of his council colleagues voted earlier this year to
recommend revocation of the club's entertainment license, but the
Planning Commission voted instead to suspend the license for 90
days. Trevi owner Michel Knight said shortly after Caron launched
the campaign that he was a backer, but contended other people also
supported it.